Barnes & Noble closes the book on Queens

The bookseller will vacate a store it leases in Bayside near the Throgs Neck Bridge in the coming months to make way for a 25,000-square-foot home-furnishings store HomeGoods, which will become the Bay Terrace shopping center's anchor tenant. The move follows news Wednesday that Barnes & Noble will be leaving a store it occupies on Austin Street in Forest Hills despite efforts by the community to save it. The 20,000-square-foot space, owned by Muss Development, has been leased by Target for a new, smaller format store the company created for urban locations that will open early next year.

Peter Ripca, founder of the brokerage firm Ripco, represented HomeGoods in its deal for the location in Bayside.

Earlier this year, Barnes & Noble closed its Union Turnpike outpost in Fresh Meadows, Queens. The discount chain TJ Maxx, which owns the HomeGoods chain, is rumored to be taking that space. That shuttered location and the two imminent closures will leave Barnes & Noble without real estate in Queens.

"Despite our best efforts to secure lease extensions at both our Forest Hills and Bayside Barnes & Noble locations, the respective property owners decided to lease to other tenants," David Deason, a vice president at Barnes & Noble, said in an emailed statement from the company. HomeGoods was willing to pay "rents far in excess of what we were willing to pay" for the Bayside space, he added.

But Mr. Deason promised the book chain would be back.

"The Queens community is extremely important to us, and as a result we are aggressively looking at new locations and expect to have a new store there in the future," he stated.

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